January 1986
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10 Reads
Public Administration Review
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Publications (35)
November 1985
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14 Reads
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2 Citations
Although some increases in the adoption of energy-efficient practices have been noted, only a small fraction of the potential savings are being realized, perhaps because human behavior is too complex for existing economic models. The rational-economic model is able to predict behavior in many situations, but it has limitations. To design effective public policy, the social, cognitive, and personal forces, that in addition to the economic realities define the situation, must be understood. This chapter examines one aspect of current energy conservation policy, the home energy audit program mandated by the Residential Conservation Service, and attempts to show how existing social psychological research might be beneficially applied.
April 1984
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24 Reads
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17 Citations
Evaluation Review
More than 200 evaluations of energy conservation programs conducted by California's four major utilities between 1977-1980 were reviewed and critiqued. In general, the evaluations were conducted in the marketing research tradition, were formative (rather than summative), and were dominated by nonexperimental surveys. Major threats to validity included:failure to consider secular economic and attitudinal trends, inadequate prior explication of key constructs, lack of random assignment, lack of appropriate comparison groups, overreliance on attitudes and self-reported behaviors as indices of conservation, and multiple unprotected statistical comparisons. Alternative evaluation techniques designed to reduce validity threats are presented, and a sample of the utilities' more recent work is assessed.
January 1984
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45 Reads
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24 Citations
Proceedings of the ICE - Energy
Four major California utility companies have active energy conservation programs mandated by the State's Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). These companies evaluate their programs and send reports of the evaluations to the CPUC. A review of 213 of these reports revealed a marketing research approach toward promoting conservation. Advertising and informational campaigns characterize most programs, and attitudes and self-reported behavior were the major outcome measures. This approach is shown to be ineffective. Suggestions for improvement include: (1) the use of actual energy consumption as the primary outcome measure in evaluating conservation programs. (2) the abandonment of conventional advertising, and the use of it only for the promotion of “hard” interventions; (3) increased use of social diffusion methods to disseminate information; (4) the design of more effective educational material by incorporating cognitive social psychological principles; and (5) the utilization of “hard” interventions that have a direct, verifiable link to conservation.
April 1983
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801 Reads
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145 Citations
American Psychologist
To design effective public policy, the social, cognitive, and personal forces that, in addition to the economic realities, define the situation must be understood. For the past 4 decades, social psychologists have been researching problems that shed light on human cognitive and social interaction and that have ramifications for increasing the use of energy-saving technology. The present article examines 1 aspect of current energy conservation policy, the home energy audit program, federally mandated by the Residential Conservation Service. The program requires major gas and electric utility companies to offer customers a variety of conservation services, including information about conservation practices and programs, and home energy audits. The authors attempt to show how existing social psychological research might be beneficially applied. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Citations (31)
... Often, this is explored in terms of moral cleansing and moral licensing (Mullen & Monin, 2016;Sachdeva et al., 2009), or moral balancing (e.g., Ploner & Regner, 2013). Similar research has been conducted in the context of hypocrisy and dissonance reduction (Stone et al., 1997;Stone & Focella, 2011), and in terms of collective action against injustices (e.g., Lodewijkx et al., 2008). Together, these different lines of research (which we refer to under the umbrella of moral self-regulation) suggest that individuals are likely to feel their MSC is threatened when they (or their in-group) are implicated in immoral behavior (e.g., Monin et al., 2008;Sachdeva et al., 2009;Tetlock et al., 2000). ...
- Citing Article
- Publisher preview available
January 1997
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
... At times, it may appear that the evidence refutes the utility of social marketing attempts, because we find that such campaigns may be inefficient or even backfire. This conclusion would be an overgeneralization, however, because most of the problems arise primarily in the campaigns that are not at all informed by the relevant theory and evidence (Aronson, 1991). When armed with the relevant theory and evidence, public information and social marketing campaigns aimed at lifestyle change should be quite successful. ...
- Citing Chapter
January 1991
... Zusammenfassend lassen sich Einstellungen als subjektive Bewertungen von Menschen, Objekten oder Ideen beschreiben. Dabei können diese Bewertungen sowohl positiv als auch negativ gerichtet sein und zu einem entsprechenden Verhalten führen (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2008;Greenwald & Banaji, 1995;Kotler & Bliemel, 2006;Trommsdorff & Teichert, 2011). ...
- Citing Book
January 2006
... Environmental citizenship behaviour would not be sustained without continuous contingencies (Pelletier et al., 1998). Motivating behaviour as a means of gaining insight into behavioural persistence was proposed as a method of study (Aronson & Gonzales, 1990). Thus, considering intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is key to eco-citizenship behaviour persistence (De Young, 1986). ...
- Citing Chapter
January 1990
... Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions in a 2 (distance manipulation: close versus distant consequences) x 2 (distance accentuation: accentuation versus no accentuation) between-participants design (see the randomization check in Supplement 2.1). This experimental setup follows the standard methodological practices in social psychology, aimed at establishing causal relationships by manipulating independent variables and observing their effects on dependent variables under controlled conditions (see Aronson et al 1998). First, participants read a scientific report that presented either spatially and temporally proximal or distal consequences of climate change 5 . ...
- Citing Article
January 1998
... Both studies imply that values relating to profligate and often careless use of energy and electricity have been built into the country's infrastructure. Once these values concerning familiarity, electricity, and consumption are formed, whatever they may be, they tend to be very difficult to alter, especially when transmitted between generations (Brehm, 1956;Stern and Aronson, 1984). ...
- Citing Article
January 1986
Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews
... Findings showed that as individuals' neuroticism decreased, their commitment to staying at home and adhering to self-isolation increased. Similar to our findings, peek et al., and Aronson et al. indicated that people with neurotic fears and anxieties have a strong tendency to use the defense mechanism of denial and use this mechanism to overcome their inner anxiety and fear and do more risky actions (26,27). In addition, high neuroticism leads to undesirable coping behaviors (28). ...
- Citing Article
September 2008
Social Research An International Quarterly
... Eliot Aronson (2012), a student of Festinger, noted that dissonance effects are greatest when two conditions are present: (1) when people feel personally responsible for their actions and (2) their actions have serious consequences. This is because dissonance reduction is an ego-defensive process that allows people to maintain positive images of themselves that is consonant with their morals and values (Aronson et al., 2013;McLeod, 2018). ...
- Citing Book
January 2009
... Both price and incentive-based DR programs are based on the assumption of rationality and utility maximization borrowed from microeconomic theory, arguing that people are selfinterested, instrumental, and behave as rational actors who consistently weigh the expected costs and benefits of their actions [165], [172]. However, individuals do not always make rational decisions [173]. Their decisions could depend on other social-psychological factors, such as cognitive load, motivation, emotions, trust, perceived risk, and behavioral control [174]. ...
- Citing Article
April 1986
Evaluation Review
... Assessing the theoretical background of a phenomenon which has received relatively little academic attention is, in many ways, a difficult task. However, research into hypocrisy is not a complete void; there has been some work within sociology (Feinberg 2002;Wieting 2015) and organisational studies (Effron et al. 2018;Lauriano et al. 2021), and even work exploring its cognitive realisation (Fried and Aronson, 1995). Likely the most prolific writer on hypocrisy is David Runciman (2006Runciman ( , 2008 who explores hypocrisy in politics -a field that is perhaps unsurprising to focus on, especially given the comments already discussed in Section 1. ...
- Citing Article
- Full-text available
September 1995
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin